As Silicon Valley hones its political agenda, Marvin Ammori has become the go-to First Amendment guy—as evidenced in January, when he helped destroy PIPA and SOPA. His method: "You're only going to win if you have better ideas, better persuasion, and better ability to organize people."

Ammori encouraged sites to show users life with censorship; on January 18, Wikipedia, Reddit, and 115,000 sites went dark, affecting 1 billion people and inspiring 10 million signatures and 8 million calls to legislators.